Performance appraisal involves planning, encouraging and evaluating employees’ contributions to the public sector’s performance. It can be one of the most powerful tools to generate a more responsive civil service. But it is usually difficult to implement, as it needs to be implemented objectively. Analysing performance appraisal requires not only considering its coverage across the civil service, but also the instruments used, what gets measured, the use of specific rules to evaluate staff and the impact of the appraisal’s results in other areas of human resources management (HRM), such as professional development.
In terms of coverage, 92% of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries included in the survey reported having some type of performance evaluation for all or almost all civil servants (the exception is in Peru, where the evaluation is in the pilot phase). These high levels of coverage, however, in many cases reflect a legal mandate implemented for compliance purposes, lacking a robust appraisal methodology and meaningful use of the results. In addition, 75% of the LAC countries included in the survey reported that they also evaluate performance at the team level (all but Argentina, Costa Rica and El Salvador). This widespread use of performance appraisal for civil servants is very similar to OECD countries, where 89% reported widespread implementation of performance appraisal at the individual level and an additional 5.5% reported that only some organisations conduct such evaluations. However, only 28% of the OECD countries evaluate performance at the team level, including France, Germany, Korea and Sweden.
Both in LAC and OECD countries, quotas (or ceilings to the number of staff who can be appraised under each category, for instance excellent, very good, good, etc.) are not usually used for assessing employees. According to the results, 75% of LAC countries in the sample do not use quotas. Only Brazil uses them in some institutions, while in Colombia and the Dominican Republic the majority of the institutions use them. Similarly, 72% of OECD countries do not use a quota system. The only countries which use it for all or almost all employees are: the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Korea and Portugal. The use of this rule, which is common in the private sector, could be important to mitigate the challenge of rating all employees at the top of the scale. However, its implementation is not free from challenges; for example, in small units, or in contexts where managers simply rotate employees among the different levels to avoid conflict.
Three-quarters of LAC countries reported that performance appraisal has a medium or high importance in defining career advancement, similar to the OECD (72%). Another 75% of LAC countries consider performance relevant for continuation in the civil service (versus 53% of OECD countries). More OECD countries reported that performance is important to define remuneration (75% versus 58% of LAC countries).
Performance appraisal can, in theory, have a high impact on defining termination due to poor performance. All LAC countries reported that this happens only very rarely. Only Chile (average of 22 cases per year between 2013 and 2017) and Costa Rica (0.5 cases per year between 2013 and 2018) reported data. In both cases, this was about 1 in every 10 000 civil servants. Among OECD countries, while it is possible in 97% of the countries (all but Turkey), 86% reported this happens very rarely. Only four countries do so regularly (Hungary, Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom). Australia (average of 84 cases per year during 2011-15), Canada (60) and France (82) were the only countries that provided data. Still, in these countries the share of these terminations with respect to the size of the civil service is negligible.
